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First time accepted submitter cupantae writes "Despite the protests of over 80,000 Irish people, Junior Minister Seán Sherlock has confirmed that the controversial statutory instrument that reinforces online copyright laws in Ireland has been signed into law. The statutory instrument will make it possible for copyright holders to seek court injunctions against companies such as internet service providers or social networks whose systems are hosting copyright-infringing material. This comes in the wake of the music industry bullying the Irish government."

"Bullying the government". I almost fell off my chair. Come on now. Are we really expected to buy that the outcome was the result of "bullying" rather than accepting a bribe?

Let's call a spade a spade here. When government accepts a bribe, government is 100% responsible. There is no benefit of doubt. There is no "but". Government holds the keys to oppression, not the music industry. Government has the guns.

A bribe is when you give money to government officials in return for favorable legislation.Bullying is when you cut off current trade agreements and routes unless government officials give you favorable legislation.

No, just a junior minister who wants t become a senior minister. Having heavy pockets like those behind his campaigns will certainly help getting that little blister re-elected.

Irish politics and election campaigns do not work like that.

Generally, candidates who stand for election have their campaign paid for largely out of a general party political fund. You can get operatives like Bertie Ahern and a few independents who have their own separate funding structure, but in general people fight for party electoral nominations as they are the ticket into the Dail.

From here, the path from a back bencher to the top generally goes:TD - > Junior Minister (a made up position with no constitutional weight) - > Minister -> Senior Minister (esp.Finance Minister) - > Taoiseach -> Scandal -> Retirement.

It is important to note that none of these steps requires a significant war chest beyond that provided by party political funds. It requires networking, skull-duggary, deals with rogues, backstabbing, ruthlessness and charm, but at no stage in the process after TD does someone need to schmooze the general public with a marketing campaign. At most they simply require a personal PR advisor (The last Taoiseach Brian Cowen, apparently didn't have one).

This isn't to say that money isn't involved, with certain Taoisigh being notorious for getting their palms greased before and after the office. But getting to the top in Ireland does not require massive personal funding, particularly corporate funding. Yet.

Or Sherlock was working to answer the question how could I best piss on freedom of speech and leave the information/tech industry at the mercy of the whims of an Irish judiciary that has already demonstrated willingness to impose draconian and ultimately ineffective measures?

He appears to have done a rather good job of solving this poser. What next, Sherlock? Oblige bus drivers to confiscate music players if their owners can't on demand present the CDs for the music contained on them? Too subtle? Okay, then

Lads there will be a referendum coming in May or June where we'll have to decide if we take a bailout from the Rothschil- sorry, the IMF - and sign over our independence to the cabals that have already destroyed the US. Keep an eye on this one.

The referendum will pass. If citizens make the wrong decision, they'll be asked again and again until they return the correct choice. The Irish will do their duty. It's a nation that lives to be dominated. They get rid of the English, only to replace them with the Vatican. Only recently have the Irish begun to question their Catholic masters, and now they'll allow bankers to run the show. The same political parties that fucked the country remain. Sherlock did thus because he knows that most people won't giv

I voted No twice on Lisbon and I'll be voting No again now on the Fiscal Compact Treaty. The lies of FG, FF and Labour will be see for what they are. Vote Yes for jobs? Lets see how well it works this time. I swear to god the media in this country would welcome the rise of the Nazi's in this country and simply say "think of the jobs that would be created by employing the skangers to legally rob people and the revenue that would be generated by the government taxing their procedes..." I just hope that the Ir

The referendum will pass.Just like in Canada. Give it time... they're just waiting for people in Quebec to start hating the rest of Canada again before their next attempt. Two referrendum votes ago, I predicted it'll go through eventually. Like you said, until the voters return the correct choice, they'll just keep trying over and over and over again.

It's retarded. They can keep failing over and over and over again, but all it takes is one single 50.1%, and it's a done deal that can never be un-done.

Last time I heard, Sony, Warner and the like weren't British. The IRA would do anything to placate the USA so long as the funds kept coming. They would have signed this bill into law like a shot - and then made money out of blackmailing the ISPs (nice little data centre you got here...wouldn't want it shut down by Sony, would you?).

Modern Sinn Fein, on the other hand, is quite a different matter, and is trying to build up an electoral presence in Ireland. Quite honestly, given the levels of corruption in both Fianna (epic) Fail and Fine Gael, they would most likely be a major improvement.

One recent Irish Taoiseach was so bent he had no bank account. He kept everything in cash in his house. He got his bribes by going to the racetrack, where he was always very lucky. The Rothschilds are not to blame for Irish corruption, nor is the IMF. If the Rothschilds really ran Ireland, it would be prosperous. You can't make money easily in a country full of poor people.

I disagree. It's standard tactic of that House to indebt governments because such loans are always backed by taxes on the people. If there Rothschilds really DIDN'T run the place, it would be prosperous. This is their MO.

You don't get it, do you? If the people are poor, there isn't much tax revenue to raise. The idea is to get Governments into debt because they have a source of tax revenue and can continue to pay the interest. Therefore, the country as a whole needs to make plenty of money to pay the taxes. Since the rich avoid or evade taxes, that in reality means a prosperous middle class.

Rothschilds actually got going by realising this and placing the sons of the founder in the capitals of countries that were rapidly becoming rich. They had headquarters in places like Vienna, not Nebraska. They lent the British Government the money to buy the Suez Canal, which was a conduit for trade, thus (a) profiting from the loan and (b) profiting by lending to promote trade.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with Walmartonomics. Walmart pays as little as possible. But, to succeed, it must have plenty of people to spend money in its stores. In effect, it wants a shit economy so it can get a cheap workforce, but really it wants a high wage economy to maximise its income. This kind of works if for "Walmart" we substitute China, and for "High wage economy" we substitute "The West". But what happens when all countries have been dragged into the mire? No markets, that's what.

Ireland, Italy and Greece are in trouble because the Governments borrowed and the taxes weren't paid, either through evasion (Italy and Greece), through "avoidance" schemes (Ireland) or because also the Governments had lied about the actual GNP (Greece). This actually wasn't the fault of the bankers, but of greedy and corrupt politicians.

As I say, if Rothschilds really ran Ireland, they would do it on the principle that the best way to produce milk is to start off with well fed cows, not to start off with starving cows and demand more output for less grass. In national economics, the Old Testament is actually a much better guide than an MBA course.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with Walmartonomics. Walmart pays as little as possible. But, to succeed, it must have plenty of people to spend money in its stores. In effect, it wants a shit economy so it can get a cheap workforce, but really it wants a high wage economy to maximise its income. This kind of works if for "Walmart" we substitute China, and for "High wage economy" we substitute "The West". But what happens when all countries have been dragged into the mire? No markets, that's what.

Come on, if you take your small isolated community where everybody provides services to each other and everyone is roughly equally wealthy then obviously that is a well functioning market. If the world had grown organically as one "country" and one market, western workers never would have gotten so far ahead in wages as we have. There's been technology barriers, language barriers, transport barriers, trade barriers, culture barriers and so on meaning you "had to" get a western work that could command a high

You don't know what you are talking about regarding Ireland.
While I am sure "avoidance" happens in Ireland as in any country the reason the tax take collapsed (for the most part, many books will be written about Ireland in the coming years) was the collapse of the construction industry which shrank in size by over 50%. Considering it was the largest part of the tax income this had a major impact on the country's budget. Join that with the 100 billion plus that was given in bailouts to the bank and you see

If the Rothschilds really ran Ireland, it would be prosperous. You can't make money easily in a country full of poor people

Those statements are absolutely hilarious. Do you really think that any foreign elite would give a rat's ass about the prosperity of their "subjects"? Hell, most native elites don't either! Remember the saying, "The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine."
As long as you control the laws and have police power, you can make tons of money in a country full of poor people. Just keep them frightened of some external bogeyman and dependent on your largess.

What a shame it is that 90% of the public are so complacent and unwilling to take action to protect their rights from the goose-stepping content cartels.

Imagine if, even if just for a month, *nobody* bought any music from members of the RIAA, nobody went to any theatres to watch movies from the MPAA, or bought their DVDs or even hired their DVDs.

Can you just see the look of absolute fear that would envelope them?

Even if we could find enough people to reduce their sales and rentals by 50%, that would send a very strong message that perhaps, when it comes to copyright "it's better the devil you know [filesharing] than the devil you don't [boycotts]"

Unfortunately, any move to organize a campaign of abstinence or a boycott would be doomed to failure -- because most people just don't give a damn anyway.

We get the government (and the storm-trooper tactics) we deserve they say. Maybe they're right:-(

Considering this is happening in Eire one might find it kind of sad given this very famous quote:

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." -- John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election for Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

That sends the wrong message too. There is plenty of DRM-free stuff available for purchase from hard working artists, independent film and record labels etc... that's the stuff we should all be buying.

I call bullshit on your post. Why not simply buy the stuff people like me produce? Almost all of my entertainment these days is from independents (good thing I don't need movies for entertainment:-). Simply go to amazon and purchasing a kindle book by someone like myself (c'mon - it's 0.99 USD - not that much for 30 mins of entertainment!). I've been reading stuff by the independents. Very little of it is bad. I tried watching a major hollywood release with big names in the credits just last week and neve

I am in fact walking the walk. Most of my reading material comes from the public domain (thank you, Project Gutenberg!) and I hardly watch any movies or TV shows. Yes, I am that guy who doesn't even own a TV.

I have cut most of the major publishers out of my life already, cutting out all of them for a month will not be a challenge.

I am in fact walking the walk. Most of my reading material comes from the public domain (thank you, Project Gutenberg!) and I hardly watch any movies or TV shows. Yes, I am that guy who doesn't even own a TV.

I have cut most of the major publishers out of my life already, cutting out all of them for a month will not be a challenge.

I didn't expect to get a 0.99 USD sale from you, because like I already said, you'll simply go out and buy twice the content in the very next month:) And yeah, it is such an aberration that someone actually points you in the direction of non-free independent artists. You seem to think that your proposal is unique; it isn't. It's been seen hundreds of times before. But of course, the proponents of this argument are too wedded to the existing popular content that the masses consume, not that there is anythin

I am amazed at how you apparently know me and my habits better than I do. Who are you to judge me on imagined pretenses?

Listen here, I do support up-and-coming independent or semi-independent artists, just not you, partly because I have never heard of you and your website. I'll have a look, but I won't promise anything. I am not against shilling your own products, especially if you're independent. But I am against starting said spiel by calling bullshit on your potential customers, that's really bad PR.

I don't know how much of a difference it'll make, but I won't be buying any music, movies or books in March. Not a single CD, DVD or paperback, nothing. Not even a download of any kind.

Probably won't make a big difference, but it'll sure make me feel better.

Well, since you (and others) will not be buying anything, it will reduce revenues for the MAFIAA companies. This drop will be shown as evidence that piracy is happening and that even more draconian laws are needed.

You may be surprised to know that most people go about their lives without spending a second thought on movies or music. If it's there for them when they return home, they might watch it.

Or more likely, they don't know they do it. Casual copying is fairly large and most people don't consider it a crime (encouraged back in the day with dual-deck cassette decks that could do high-speed dubbing).

Sadly democracy relies on the bulk of the citizens actually keeping appraised of various issues, having the education and intelligence to really make an intelligent decision and then actually acting upon it by at least electing representatives that represent their opinions - and keeping a leash on them to ensure they don't waver from the path.

Most people don't care at all until a government does something they don't like - and by then its way too late.They won't notice until someone abuses this legislation to take down some website they care about with no recourse, no warrant and no time in court.

Sad to see Ireland sell itself to the big Media corporations like this. So much for all the years of struggle for an independent Ireland.

Don't forget that the public generally only knows about the things the media tells them about and -- in the list of SOPA sponsors there are a huge number of big media players -- all eager to use it to protect their content.

Hence, we've seen very little (if any) objective mainstream media coverage of SOPA and what it will mean to the average joe citizen.

Unfortunately, the real power to shape the minds and opinions of the masses lies in the hands of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the other media barons.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson knew that for democracy to work we had to have an informed electorate. Unfortunately now people are to caught up in TMZ or Survivor or whatever the flavor of the month is. The bulk of the population is wholly absorbed in bread and circuses. Consider this, those distractions are produced by the companies that are pushing these style of laws. Any politician

Only a small fraction of the population is politically active enough to protest against something. Show me one protest that consisted of more than 50% of the population. That doesn't mean that the remaining 6120000 people would vote for the law in case of a referendum.

Did you mean 100% (50% on each side)? In a sense they did, in that many historians reckon the ACW was the first "total war". When I read the GP I was thinking myself for an example when I read the parent and realised the ACW is a good one.

You cannot expect the elderly, women (in those days anyway) and children to fight on the battlefield, but, particularly in the South, they did things on the home front like making observation balloons out of their silk dresses, a bit like in Britain in WW2. Then ther

If only 80,000 protested then that means the majority is either OK are at least apathetic towards the legislation.

In that case, there is nothing wrong with it going ahead. The problem lies with the rest of the population who didn't do their part to protest, not the government passing a law.

Yet another strike against democracy.

Ireland is the kind of place where the government puts a treaty in front of us to vote for or against. If we vote against, then a few months later the exact same treaty is in front of us to vote for or against, as many times as needed until we get the right answer.

For it to be a strike against democracy there would need to be democracy in Ireland.

The problem lies with the rest of the population who didn't do their part to protest, not the government passing a law.

No, no. The problem lies with politicians operating on an assumption that any legislation is ok as long as 50% of people aren't protesting on the street. Elected politicians are supposed to represent the population. It's their job.
What is sorely needed is an easy mechanism to initiate a vote of no confidence (and if 51% vote to recall, politician immediately gets removed from post and banned from running for 2 years). If a legislation that pissed off a lot of people had such potential consequence (and SOPA appears to qualify), politicians would be so much more careful in what they vote for. As it stands, by the time they are running for re-election 2+ years may have passed...

No, sir. I do not see you reasoning. What I see are 80,000 concerned people against an action proposed by a group of people who are FAR less than that number. If you wanted to count active votes for and against the proposition, the 80,000 is the obvious winner. Not voting isn't a vote of approval.

That's more than 1%... given school aged, and the elderly, people who had to work, percentage who knew about this. This is like 20-30% of people who could have shown up. This is really a MASSIVE amount of people.

This post marks my intent to declare independence. At the time 30 days from now, all properties held by me shall belong to the new country Freefromcorporategreedistan and will fall under the governance of myself. No law shall be passed in Freefromcorporategreedistan which allows invasion of privacy, or restriction of human rights without judicial oversight. The right of the corporation to profit shall be protected except where fundamental human rights (privacy, judicial oversioght, etc) supercede.

It's called Black March. I think a better awareness campaign would have made it more popular but essentially, it's about not buying or downloading any media content for the month of March in order to make a dent in the entertainment industries profits. Check it out!

It's a sad day for the internet in Ireland. Yes there are ways around censorship, but the more governments try to control the internet the more they damage the whole point of it. Remember censorship is considered a fault by the internet and it automatically attempts to re-route the traffic. It will also affect jobs as no-one will want to set up a site based here, nor on Amazon's european cloud, which is based here, for fear they could be taken offline by some wide ranging vague complaint by rights holders, which we have already seen overstep their ability to actually remove actual content. Of course rather than remove content based in Ireland they will also attempt to block foreign content. Not ideal if you want to do business worldwide

Remember censorship is considered a fault by the internet and it automatically attempts to re-route the traffic.

No. This childish notion with no basis in reality needs to be shot down because it makes delusional people think the internet is some living, sentient entity that can automagically repair and heal itself. This is not reality. The internet is a communications network with strong decentralization features, but it lacks any cognitive abilities and is not a person or even an animal. It's a network of machines. If steps are not taken in meatspace to defend it, it will be subverted and bent to the will of the 1%,

We all know that a huge chunk of the irish population lived with machine gun fire and regular bombings for breakfast right? bring back the IRA, but not as a religious segregation movement. as a populous uprising. without the violence. just make very bad copies of the belongings of those who want rich americans rights more than populous opinion. make copies of cars, and houses. but the copies be so poorly executed that they are on fire. and delete originals:)

Democracy doesn't work. But it's the best out of a shit selection of (tried) options for ruling a country. Sometimes I'm not saddened if normal folks aren't aware of such laws - why would they care? At this stage they'd only seem like trivialities compared to the actual problems most people have in their lives.

I'd view this with a healthy dose of suspicion. I'm in Canada. We are a small country population-wise, and subjected to bullying in trade negotiations by our neighbour, the USA. We are eternally pressured to enact stronger copyright laws for example.

One fine day, our government decided we needed to update our copyright laws. They sought broad public input. Now we are at the point of passing these new laws. Wouldn't you know it, though they consulted broadly, in the end they simply ignored any input that did

It will be good for the rest of the world, as I'm sure if there were any Irish based Social Networks or Hosts of any kind they're feverishly working to move out of Ireland. Pity that ISP's will probably be screwed since they can't realistically leave and still service Irish customers.

You mean like Facebook? I don't think they will be too concerned about this. Maybe Google then? Nope staying put. I hate this bill but don't for a second think this will change anything other than harm small individuals.

For those who support the idea of copyright, SOPA is on its face wrongheaded. Again and again, legislation is enacted or pushed to be enacted "for the artists". It makes me think of all the times similar wordings "for the workers" invariable is designed to benefit companies. I thought it was well understood that trickle-down economics doesn't work. It's not enough to find ways to give companies, IP based or not, more money through tax breaks or longer/stronger copyright terms in the hopes they'll decid